


runnin' since the day i was born

by supernova (indigo_penstrokes)



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Newly Risen Guardian, just art trying her best and meeting someone who can help
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29928057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigo_penstrokes/pseuds/supernova
Summary: Her first coherent thought is that she’s dying.But then she’s breathing, great heaving lungfuls of air, and the realization hits her that she is very much alive.
Relationships: Female Guardian & Ghost (Destiny)
Kudos: 5





	runnin' since the day i was born

**Author's Note:**

> my first destiny piece! just a little bit of the origin story for my hunter Artemis and her ghost Lune

Her first coherent thought is that she’s dying. 

But then she’s breathing, great heaving lungfuls of air, and the realization hits her that she is very much alive. Her entire body full of that pins-and-needles, electric pain that makes every movement excruciating as she tries to stand. The crumbling building behind her holds most of her weight as she tries to settle back into the rhythm of living again.

“Come on, up and at ‘em,” A voice says, but she can’t see where it’s coming from.

“What…” Her voice cracks as she spins in circles trying to find it.

“Over here, little floating guy.” 

She makes another half rotation before seeing that there is indeed a small, fist sized, machine floating about six feet in front of her. 

“There we go,” It says, blue light glowing brightly at its center. “Long story short, you were dead, I –your Ghost– brought you back with the Light. The Light also gives you paracausal abilities and means you can’t die so long as I’m here. So now our best course of action is to get you back to the Last Safe City where everything will make a bit more sense.” 

“That feels like a lot of details are being left out.” She rubs a hand across her face, probably smearing grime and who knows what else all over it. That pins and needles feeling hasn’t left her body, and it’s starting to make her twitchy. Mentally she takes stock of where she is, a city that has no doubt seen better days. What she has on her person, a quick pat down finds a gun and three knives and there’s probably a lot more judging by the weight of her jacket.

Her machine, Ghost, whatever, shrugs, shell moving up and down as he bobs in the air. 

“You said I died, how? And why can’t I remember it?” She flexes her hands as she talks, still trying to dispel the static clinging there.

“No idea, it was long before I even existed. As for the memories, once a guardian is risen they can’t remember their previous life, or if they do its hardly anything at all.” 

“Okay, another question then.” She crosses her arms. “How did you bring me back?”

“The Traveler, it’s this big entity of the Light that showed up to your world centuries ago, then as a way to combat the Darkness it created Ghosts, like me, to go out and raise guardians to protect not only the Traveler but the people of your sol system and beyond.” 

She side eyes the Ghost. “That sounds like it just raised an army to defend itself. Especially if none of us have any memories of who we were.”

Ghost shrugs again, that same lifting of his shell. 

She sighs, an interrogation is going to get her exactly nowhere. “You said we had somewhere to be, so lead the way.” 

And so, they begin the trek towards the Last City. 

– 

The first time they’re ambushed she takes an electrified projectile to the shoulder. It rips through her jacket and buries into the muscle beneath, a hairsbreadth away from her heart. All she can taste is static.

“Fallen!” Her Ghost shouts through their newly formed neural link, completely unhelpful. She doesn’t care about names, she just needs to know what to shoot at. 

She gets three shots off before she sees what it really is. Vaguely humanoid, but with four arms and four eyes that glow in the murky dusk, and more importantly a gun glowing with electricity as it charges up another shot. 

“Duck!” 

She hits the overgrown cement with a barely contained cry of pain before lining up another one handed shot as her right arm hangs dead at her side. The bullet goes wide, just barely missing the thing’s head, which just makes it snarl and shoot at her again. 

This time it hits her stomach, rending vital organs and tissues. Her gun clatters to the ground as she falls, head cracking against stone and metal. The static has become a storm in her chest, striking against her ribs like lightning, begging to be discharged.

She’s barely aware of her own actions as she reaches for one of the knives at her side and swings for the creature despite being a solid five feet away. The energy beneath her skin surges and suddenly she feels the blade connect with flesh. It sprays her with a warm, almost sweet smelling liquid. 

The thing, the Fallen, hits the ground with a dull thud, leaking blue-black blood from the wound at its throat. 

It takes everything in her to not collapse then and there, though she barely makes it to a wall before her knees begin to buckle. She shimmies one arm, the one that’s not dead, out of her jacket, folds the sleeve between her teeth, and rips the arc bolt out of her shoulder with a barely muffled scream. She does the same to the one in her abdomen. Distantly she thinks she remembers something about leaving things alone when you’ve been shot, but the pain blacks pretty much everything out. 

She hears the Ghost materialize before she feels a gentle sense of relief begin to ebb into her body. “We really should try to find some armor for you. Next time it might not be just a single vandal.” 

“So that’s what that fucker was, good to know now that its done trying to kill me,” She breathes out, eyes barely open as she wipes off the knife on her pantleg before putting it back into the sheath at her thigh. 

“I did try to warn you.”

“Shouting ‘fallen’ and ‘duck’ aren’t really warnings, bud.” 

Ghost ‘humphs’ probably doing his level best to look grouchy. “Well, at least we figured out that arc is your element. That was a pretty impressive blink strike back there.” 

“Is that why I feel like someone grounded a live wire into my body?” She finally levers herself back to standing, rolling out her shoulders. She’s starting to believe that the uncomfortable tingling sensation in her hands is a permanent one.

Her Ghost swoops in closer as she goes to retrieve her gun. “That feeling should go away once you get better at controlling and manipulating your Light.” 

“It better, I’m already tired of feeling like all my limbs have fallen asleep.” She checks the bullets in the mag, eight left, and with another two full backups in her pockets, she should be alright as long as they don’t run into too many hostile encounters. “How much further do we need to go?”

“Only about four-thousand eight-hundred and thirty miles, give or take a few hundred.”

“You’re kidding.” 

“Not kidding, but it should only be around a thousand to the closest space port.” 

“ _ You’re kidding. _ ” 

– 

Eventually they do find her some armor, though it’s little more than a cracked helmet and a quilted kevlar vest. At least it matches her jacket and pants. 

“Y’know what, fuck this.” She’s been trying to get the helmet to fit comfortably on her head with her hair pulled up for at least an hour now, and nothing is working. So she pulls out her sharpest knife, coaxes just enough arc into it to make it hum, and starts hacking away at her hair until it just barely brushes her collar.

“I feel like I should have stopped that, but honestly I’m just a little bit scared of what would have happened if I did.” Her Ghost is hovering nearby, but noticeably just outside arms reach. 

She laughs, tossing the clumps of purple hair into the fire and wrinkling her nose when they begin to burn. Definitely not her best idea, but at least the helmet fits now. The padding inside is worn and compressed, its probably seen one too many hits to keep her head truly safe, but something is better than nothing when things want to kill you at every turn.

She pulls her hood up over the helmet and strikes a pose. “So, how do I look?”

“Like I won’t be pulling your brains off the pavement.” The Ghost zips over to her shoulder, accessing her new outfit.

“I think I look roguish.” She watches her reflection in the broken glass of a storefront as she pulls the helmet back off. The action sparks something in her mind, there’s a familiarity to it, like she’s done it countless times before. And for the briefest of moments she almost expects someone else to be next to her in the reflection. 

– 

The first time she dies is so much worse than she could have ever imagined. 

They’re a day out from the remains of a settlement only recently vacated with the hopes of finding something better than overcooked venison to eat, or at least that’s what she’s looking forward to, the Ghost is hoping there will be a transmitter of some sort so they can get a message out to the newly formed Vanguard. 

What they find instead on the way is a squad of Fallen raiders. 

Or rather, the raiders find them. 

Now they’re trapped in the ruined shell of a house. She’s out of bullets after emptying a full magazine into the biggest one out there and picking off the smaller ones with a bullet to the head each. She’s out of time and out of chances when she hears the now all too familiar hum of arc spears as they round into the next room over. 

She can taste static on her tongue as she grips a knife in each hand, and leaps out from her cover, only to be met with the crackling end of a spear. The Fallen wielding it crows triumphantly as it drives the electric point farther into her chest, shattering ribs and shredding her lung. 

The pain is a tangible thing, coursing up into her heart and tearing it apart until all she knows is lighting and blood. Her Light leaps off her in dying arcs, trying in vain to ground itself in something that will help her. But it’s not enough as everything eclipses to black. 

The Ghost pulls her back together, but they’re still inside that house, still just a breath away from everything that wants her dead and she can already feel her Light depleting. 

She meets the same end four more times before she kills the wretches. 

She keeps the panic away by sheer force of will as she locates the captain outside. It’s big, pushing seven feet tall and at least three times her own weight, with a gun larger than any she’s seen in this life and possibly the one before it. The damn thing took all twelve of her shots like they were nothing. 

She dies two more times being stomped into the ground after tanking a shrapnel shot to the chest. A third where her head is blown clean off as she tries to get close enough to stab. The rest all blur together in a mess of lighting and burning metal as her Light dwindles dangerously low. 

In her latest attempt she can barely see through the blood running down her face, but for a moment she thinks something’s blocked out the sun. 

The shadow shot hits the ground two moments later. 

It pulls the captain into itself as the creature snarls, firing up into the sky.

Three more volleys land one after the other, sinking a gnawing, violet energy into the captain that eats away at it until there is nothing left but a smoking smudge of pavement. 

The guardian responsible lands a few feet away, silver cloak whipping around them in a nonexistent wind. They glow with that same hungry energy, a longbow held loosely in one hand. After a moment of what she can only call posing, the Light fades and she’s left looking at someone just a little more human. 

She sways on her feet, how many lives is this? Eight? Twelve? Her Light says it’s far more than that. She doesn’t realize she’s falling until the guardian is at her side, hefting her back up.

“Hey there, take it easy.” The guardian sounds softer than she was expecting. “That was one hell of a fight you put up.”

“Thanks,” She slurs. Everything hurts. Every breath sends stars shooting across her vision. Her head still rings from where she hit the wall and cracked her helmet open like an egg. 

“Where’s your Ghost, kid?” The guardian shifts their combined weight as they begin to walk towards some unknown horizon. 

The Ghost pops up, “I’m here, but we’re pretty much running on empty.” 

“Stars above,” The guardian breathes softly. “Hang in there kid, I’ll get you home soon.” 

“Mhm,” Is all she manages before the world goes dark again. 

She sleeps for a long time, floating in an empty blackness as the Light slowly comes back to her. It snakes through the dark lighting it up before coming to hold her soft as sunshine. She wakes up much more gently than the first time, the pins and needles are still there, but its a comfort rather than a pain this time around.

“There you are,” The Ghost says, annoyingly right in her face. “I thought we might have to get Chrona to call in one of her warlock pals to make sure you didn’t  _ die  _ die.”

“I wasn’t gonna die.” She pushes the small machine away so she can sit up, the bed creaking beneath her. She’s still sore, but at least someone had the good idea to put her in some more comfortable clothes. “I think it’d take a lot more than just that.” 

“Mm three days of unconsciousness might beg otherwise.” 

“Then let it beg.” Her stomach lets out a growl. “Just tell me there’s actual food here.” 

The Ghost just huffs before floating out towards what is probably, hopefully, a kitchen. 

The short walk through the house shows it’s a space well lived in. Pieces of guns and other weaponry litter many of the open surfaces, but there are also jar candles and vases of dried flowers on some of the shelves. Cloaks hanging on pegs in the hall, and boots resting beneath them. It almost feels like she’s intruding on someone else’s life, and in a way she is, so it’s a relief when she finally makes it to the kitchen.

The guardian from the day before, presumably the Chrona Ghost had mentioned, is sitting at a small worn table in the center of the room. Chipped mug in one hand and a datapad in the other. She’s older than expected, her black hair run through with silver where it’s tied up in a loose knot, but her face still has a youth to it that’s almost surprising. 

“There’s eggs on the stove and some juice in the fridge, I wasn’t sure if I’d be seeing you today but I had a feeling.” Chrona doesn’t look up from her datapad. 

It’s easy enough to find a plate and dish up the eggs that are still warm, it must still be early then. The glass and the juice come next in a balancing act that could have been avoided if she just put down the plate, but even in her short second life she isn’t one for giving up that easily.

“So kid,” Chrona starts once she’s sat down and devoured most of the eggs. “Got a name?” 

The question almost makes her choke on a mouthful of juice. It seems like such a ridiculous thing to not have thought about before. She’s been alive for a little over a month and never once had it crossed her mind that she hadn’t thought of a name for herself. But she had been a little busy trying not to die to have time for such things. And really she hadn’t needed one, until now it seems. So she simply says, “Didn’t need one.”

Chrona hums, head tilted a few degrees to the side. Contemplating. It feels like she’s being cracked open and read for all she’s worth. “How do you feel about Artemis?”

She turns the name over in her head, it’s got a nice shape to it and it sounded good when Chrona said it. “What’s it mean?”

“Ancient goddess of the hunt and moon. Was also called Diana if that’s more your style.”

“No, Artemis is good. Just feel a bit on the nose, doesn’t it.”

Chrona shrugs. “I think we make our own meaning, but it’s not always a bad thing to have a place to start.” 

Artemis finds she might just like that way of thinking.

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment if you can, they help me become a better writer and will always make my day!
> 
> d2 tumblr @fireteamsupernova


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